Rumpole Misbehaves (2 page)

Rumpole is down in the dumps. He is suffering from an acute shortage of work, which makes him almost impossible to live with. Rumpole in a high mood, when he's engaged in an important murder trial, for instance, is not an easy man to live with either. If he wins such cases it's even more embarrassing, and I'm expected to listen to quotations from his final speech and asked if I had ever heard of a better courtroom advocate. When he is down in the dumps, however, and without any interesting briefs, he tends to sit in silence, only occasionally asking if we couldn't cut down on such essentials as household cleaning materials.

As I have recorded in previous chapters of these memoirs, I met Sir Leonard Bullingham, now a High Court judge, at bridge afternoons in the house of my friend Marcia Hopnew, known as Mash. Leonard (this was before he got elevated and was merely Judge Bullingham at the Old Bailey) took, as you may remember, a considerable shine to me, and went to the lengths of proposing that I should divorce Rumpole and marry him. I found this proposition unacceptable when he suggested that we should take dancing lessons and go to tea dances at the Waldorf Hotel. I didn't fancy myself doing the tango among the teacups, thank you very much, so I turned Leonard down.

All the same, we kept meeting and playing bridge whenever the newly appointed Sir Leonard had a free afternoon. I always enjoy the post-mortem discussions after each round.

‘If you'd led a small Spade,' I told Leonard after our game was over, ‘we could have finessed their Queen. As it was, you led a Heart for no particular reason that I could see.'

‘Wonderful!' Leonard looked at me with admiration.

‘It wasn't wonderful at all. You should have remembered that I'd bid Spades.'

‘No, it's wonderful that you have such an incisive mind, Hilda. And a clear memory for every card that's played. These are the sort of talents needed for a great courtroom advocate. Pity you never considered reading for the Bar.'

Well! I didn't say any more at the time, but the thought was planted. If my mind was so incisive, why shouldn't I make a better hand at being a barrister than Rumpole, who apparently has no work in view except a small boy's footballing offences?

After we had settled the scores, and worked out that he and I had won two pounds fifty pence, the High Court judge said, ‘I know you've elected to stand by Rumpole through thick and thin, Hilda. But I hope that doesn't prevent us having another occasional date. Purely platonic, of course.'

I told Leonard that I would have no objection to meeting him occasionally. I didn't care for that ‘platonic' thing he mentioned. As though he flattered himself that there was a chance of it being anything else.

The truth was that I needed Leonard's help in what has now become my Great Decision. I will read for the Bar!

AS A RESULT OF THE RECENT

CHAMBERS MEETING, 4 EQUITY

COURT HAS BEEN DECLARED

A NON-SMOKING AREA.

SMOKING WILL NOT BE PERMITTED

IN ANY PART OF THE BUILDING,

INCLUDING THE UPPER AND

LOWER TOILETS. IN FUTURE

ONLY NON-SMOKERS WILL BE

ADMITTED TO PUPILLAGE.

COFFEE WILL STILL BE PROVIDED AT

A REASONABLE COST, BUT THE

CONSUMPTION OF BEERS, WINES, SPIRITS

AND FOOD ON THE PREMISES

IS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN.

SIGNED: Samuel Ballard, QC

Now, at that time in the Rumpole history, when crime and therefore briefs appeared to be a bit thin on the ground, I had given up the luxury of a pie and pint of Guinness in the pub and instead had to put up with sandwiches for lunch. What with the search of our bags for terrorist devices, I had to smuggle in these sandwiches in the folds of the Rumpole mac. I went, on a dull morning out of court, to Pommeroy's for a bottle of their very cheap and ordinary to wash down my lunch. It was while I was enjoying this picnic that Luci Gribble, our newly appointed Director of Marketing and Administration, came into my room and sat down, looking at me with a sort of amused despair.

‘You're a hopeless case, Rumpole,' she said.

‘Am I really? I rather like hopeless cases. They're the ones I usually manage to win.'

‘Well, I don't think you're going to win this time. Haven't you seen the notice put up by our Head of Chambers?'

‘I have, and I read it with interest.'

‘You seem to be breaking every one of the new rules in Chambers, eating, drinking and smoking a small cigar.'

‘Of course, Soapy Sam's notice clearly doesn't apply to me.'

‘Why not? You're a member of Chambers.'

‘But I didn't attend the Chambers meeting.'

‘You never attend the Chambers meetings.'

‘Exactly! So the decisions they come to are only binding on those who attend. They are
res inter alios acta
.'

‘What's that meant to mean?' It was clear that Luci had even less Latin than I had.

‘A thing decided among others. Leaving me free to do as I please.'

‘I don't think that's much of a defence.' Luci looked sceptical. ‘I mean, you weren't present when they passed the laws against murder, but that doesn't mean you can go about killing people.'

I suppose our Director of Marketing had a point there, but I found her next remark quite ridiculous. ‘Erskine-Brown is considering the possibility of getting an ASBO against you, Rumpole.'

‘An anti-social behaviour order?'

‘That's the one.'

‘Against me, did you say?'

‘Exactly.'

‘And what's the nature of their complaint?'

‘Persistent smoking in Chambers, and bringing food and alcoholic refreshments into your room.'

‘That's not anti-social behaviour. It's entirely social. Sit down, my dear old Director of Marketing. Let me offer you an egg sandwich, prepared by the hand of She Who Must Be Obeyed. Bring a spare glass and I can offer you a cheap and cheery mouthful. Now what could be more social than that?'

‘Don't be ridiculous, Rumpole.'

‘What's ridiculous about it?'

‘If I accepted your hospitality…'

‘Yes?'

‘Then I'd be as anti-social as you are.'

At this our Director of Marketing left me feeling profoundly anti-social so far as Ballard and his devious sidekick, Claude Erskine-Brown, were concerned.

 

There is a certain area of London, not far from Clapham Common, where the streets of the wealthier middle classes, such as Beechwood Grove, are perilously close to less respectable areas, such as Rampton Road, which have become inhabited by members of the ever-spreading Timson clan, among them Bertie Timson, his wife, Leonie, and their single child, the twelve-year-old Peter. Bertie Timson's alleged trade as an ‘Electrical Consultant' was in fact a cover story for more felonious transactions, but he was a polite enough client, and I remember him thanking me warmly after a successful defence on a charge of carrying house-breaking implements. He had done his time during Peter's extreme youth and now, when his son got into trouble, he had remembered Rumpole.

Peter and his friends frequently engaged in football games in Rampton Road which the neighbours apparently suffered without protest. However, on too many occasions the ball found its way into the quiet and respectable precincts of Beechwood Grove. After a number of complaints, the police were called. When Peter Timson pursued a flying ball into Beechwood Grove, he alone was apprehended, as the rest of the team scarpered. Apparently Peter was considered to be the ringleader and source of all the trouble.

 

So I walked one Monday morning, with rain dribbling down from a grey sky, into the South London Magistrates' Court to defend a serious case of wrongfully kicked football. Madam Chair, hawk-nosed and sharp-eyed, with a hair-do which looked as though it had been carved out of yellow soap, sat between two unremarkable bookends, a stout and pink-faced man with a Trade Union badge in his lapel and a lean and hungry-looking fellow who might have been a schoolmaster.

‘It's unusual for the defendant to be represented at this stage of the ASBO proceedings, Mr Rumpole. We wonder that you can spare the time from your busy practice.' Madam Chair sounded coldly amused.

‘Then wonder on,' I told her, ‘till truth make all things plain. Busy as I am, and I am of course extremely busy, I can always spare time for a case in which the liberty of the subject is an issue.'

‘Your young client's liberty won't become an issue unless he breaks an anti-social behaviour order. We are all concerned with the liberty of the subject to enjoy peace from noisy footballers. Mr Parkes, I'm sure that you have a statement.'

The person addressed as Parkes appeared to be some eager young dogsbody from the local council. He handed a document up to the bench and began to read the statement of a Mrs Harriet Englefield of 15 Beechwood Grove. She said she was a ‘healer' by profession and had many clients whom she was able to treat for physical and nervous disorders in a peaceful and homely atmosphere. She also had an aged mother who had been ordered long periods of rest and tranquillity, which had become impossible owing to the noisy games of football played by ‘rough children who come pouring in from Rampton Road'.

It was at this point that I rose to object. ‘No doubt this Mrs Harriet Englefield will be giving evidence on oath?'

‘The law has advanced a little since your call to the Bar, Mr Rumpole. We don't need to trouble such witnesses as Mrs Englefield. We are entitled to proceed on her written statement,' Madam Chair told me.

‘So you are prepared to decide a criminal matter on hearsay evidence?'

‘It's not a criminal matter yet, Mr Rumpole. And it won't be unless your client breaks the order we've been asked to make.'

‘And plays football again?'

‘Exactly!'

‘Very well. I take it that even if we have dispensed with the rule against hearsay evidence, I am still allowed to address the court?'

This request was apparently so unusual that Madam Chair had to seek advice from the clerk of the court, who stood up from his seat below her throne to whisper. This advice she passed on in a brief mutter to her bookends. Then she spoke.

‘We are prepared to hear you, Mr Rumpole, but make it brief.'

‘I shall be brief. What is anti-social behaviour? If you ask me, I would say that the world has advanced towards civilization by reason of anti-social behaviour. The suffragettes behaved antisocially and achieved the vote. Nelson Mandela's anti-social campaign brought justice to South Africa. Now this young person, this child I represent…'

I turned to wave a hand towards the long-haired twelve-year-old with curiously thoughtful brown eyes. ‘This young Peter, or Pete, Timson.'

‘Who is neither a suffragette nor Nelson Mandela,' Madam Chair thought it fit to remind me.

‘That is true,' I had to admit. ‘But he is an innocent child. He has no criminal record. He has broken no law. If football is illegal, it should be forbidden by an act of Parliament. Don't stain his blameless record by a verdict based on untested hearsay evidence.'

‘Is that all, Mr Rumpole?' Madam Chair broke into my final dramatic pause.

‘All,' I said. ‘And more than enough, in my submission, to let this child go back to playing.' With this I sat down, in the vain hope that I might have touched, somewhere in Madam Chair, a mother's heart.

After further whispered conversations the Chair spoke. ‘Mr Rumpole's speeches,' she said, ‘may be thought amusing in the Central Criminal Court, but here we cannot let his so-called oratory distract us from our clear duty. Peter Timson.' Here, prompted by an usher, my client rose to his diminutive height. ‘We make an order forbidding you to enter Beechwood Grove for any purpose whatsoever, including, of course, the playing of football.'

 

When I went to say goodbye to my client, he was standing next to his father, Bertie.

‘Say thank you to Mr Rumpole. I suppose he did his best.'

‘Thank you, Mr Rumpole.' Peter seemed extraordinarily pleased with the result. ‘I got an ASBO! All them down Rampton Road are going to be
so
jealous.'

I had never, in all my legal life, met so delighted a loser.

 

Back in Chambers I poured out the last glass from a bottle of Château Thames Embankment and lit a small cigar. My spirits were at a low ebb. My practice seemed to have shrunk to Pete-sized proportions. Then, quite unexpectedly, the tide turned. The telephone rang and I picked it up to hear once again the voice of my favourite solicitor.

‘I'm sorry about the ASBO case,' Bonny Bernard said. ‘But I think I might soon be in a position to offer you a murder.'